Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Kafka lives

But as the original warrant and charges that he was on bail for have been withdrawn, he shouldn't have been on bail in the first place, as he had (technically) not done anything wrong.

I'm afraid this in wrong on every level.

Firstly Sweden have never charged him. Their legal system is different to ours and he buggered off to Blighty the night before his interview, where they could charge him.

Secondly charges haven't been withdrawn. Well obviously they haven't even been pressed yet. But the investigation hasn't been dropped. They've just stopped pursuing it, and withdrawn the International Arrest Warrant. They're free to re-issue the EAW as soon as progress looks more likely - it was only cancelled because they got their wrists slapped by their courts for carrying on with a case that was impossible to resolve.

But that still doesn't mean he retrospectively shouldn't have been on bail in the first place. That would be ludicrous - as it would basically be saying to criminals that if you can run away for long enough, you can get away with it.

Actually Sweden do that, with their statute of limitations. Something I think is immoral, even if there are good reasons for it. Like Berlusconi getting away with all those fraud convictions, by running so many appeals, that the final appeal hadn't been heard before the statute of limitations ran out - so he got off even though the previous court had convicted him. Or in fact Assange getting away with hiding for 5 years from the sexual assault allegations, in order to avoid having to face his accusors in court. He's now just 3 1/2 years from running away from his rape case - which doesn't exactly do much justice to the alleged victims.

Anyway his breach of legitimate bail was a crime when he did it. And just because he's successfully hidden from justice, doesn't seem a good reason to let him off that - given he knew full well what he was doing when he did it. I hope Ecuador kick him out before the time runs out, so those 2 Swedish women get their day in court. Be funny if he was found not guilty, and had wasted 6 years in voluntary hiding... Well maybe not really funny, but I think I'd still laugh.

Re: Frankly

James O'Shea,

The problem for St Jules is that he's got 4 more years of this. The Swedish Prosecutors Office haven't dropped the investigation, only suspended it for lack of progress. Their courts told them it was disproportionate to continue the chase without any prospect of a solution, him having hidden in an embassy and that embassy not cooperating with the investigation.

So as soon as he pops out and hopefully gets dragged off to court and a couple of months chokey for bail-jumping - the Swedes just need to get the tippex out, change the date, remove the charges that expired after 5 years, and re-issue the EAW. That's been ruled legal, so then it's off to Sweden for him, chop-chop. Then they can finally do their pre-charge interview and either charge him or release him. Then try him, or deport him.

Re: Send in the S.A.S.

I really doubt it takes the SAS to get into a flat in Knightsbridge. Just politely knocking would do just as well.

But it's an embassy, so you don't do that sort of thing without good reason. And Assange is not good enough reason to risk one of the fundamental tenets of international law. Embassies are incredibly important, because it's how governments talk to each other. And jaw-jaw is almost always better than war-war.

So it's inconvenient, but then it's even more inconvenient for Ecuador. Who've been desperate to solve this situation, and get him out of their embassy for years. The problem is, they don't want to lose face by backing down, so the Foreign Office are probably chuckling quite happily about their discomfort.

Re: If he gets his way...

Lysenko,

There's a lot of law here, and as usual, you can get legal opinions either way. I read an interesting argument a few years ago between a UK ex-ambassador and one of the Foreign Office's legal officers.

The ambassador argued the full Vienna Convention thing. The lawyer said, that's all fine, but you also have to count custom and practise. So for example when Mossad helped Nigeria kidnap a dissident in London, and smuggled him out in the diplomatic bag - the police broke the seals on said diplomatic luggage and rescued him. Then told the Nigerians off. The FCO and police got off scott-free for doing that. I believe there's another article in the Vienna Conventions stating that diplomatic bags must be for diplomatic papers and stuff for the embassy's use only. What you've got there is two competing laws, which means you need to lawyer up, and fight it out in court.

Interstingly there's actually a quirk in the conventions. We can refuse an ambassador before they're appointed. Thus denying them diplomatic immunity. However we can't refuse lower members of embassy staff diplomatic immunity/status until after they've been appointed. And the Conventions specifically state that we can declare them "Persona Non Grata", but have to then give them a reasonable time to leave the country, unmolested, immunity intact.

So as Ecuador apparently made that request a few weeks ago, the FCO are technically in breach of the Vienna Conventions. I've read those, though not the UK law that brings them into force here, so don't know what that has to say on the matter.

The FCO's response was to be ambiguous, but firm. Their note to Ecuador, that got leaked last week, said that we don't recognise him as holding diplomatic status, and so he does not have immunity.

This is clearly a challenge to Ecuador to see you in court. Don't ask me who'd win... Though this is such an obvious pisstake and there are various get-out-clauses (like diplomatic immunity not counting for non-diplomatic personal activities), that a willing judge could find something. In general UK law does not allow retrospective changes, so I don't see how he can be made magically immune from stuff that happened before his diplomatic immunity would be granted - but that would be down to a judge if Ecuador wanted to try their luck.

My favourite source on this is another ex-UK ambassador: He's got 4 blog posts on the subject - this has the leaked FCO note - others have links to the legal discussion

Tesla might fail. People invested in a start-up, that's what they do. So what?

The proposal here is to pay him nothing if he fails, and lots-and-lots if he succeeds. Given investors have already put their money into Tesla, that's a win-win for them. Either their losses don't increase, or they get a slightly smaller share of the potential profits.

Re: Just a house of cards...

Anon,

You can't just handwave and dismiss SpaceX because they blew one of their rockets up. Tesla might still be a work in process (and may fail) but SpaceX have arrived. Maybe he'll screw it up and waste that potential, but so far they look to be just powering on.

They are already one of the cheapest ways of getting medium weight payloads to orbit. They're testing a new rocket this month to get them into the heavy payload category. They've managed to land and re-use rockets - in a way that's never been done before - and the savings from that give them vast growth potential.

And they're not really taking subsidies from the US government. Tesla might operate on subsidies - but SpaceX get paid for doing actual stuff. That's not a subsidy, it's revenue. OK, NASA have worked it so there's a promise of money in advance (and some paid up front that might be lost) - but then they're asking for companies to develop new technology that doesn't yet exist, so that's fair enough. Most of the money gets paid only if the tech succeeds. So SpaceX now get paid a commercial rate to deliver to eh ISS. If their manned capsule works, they'll get the same for that.

Re: The "Silcon Valley" business plan seems to be.

It's a perfectly valid way to innovate. One of the reasons our economies have grown so massively over the last few centuries is that free market economics allows lots of failures. Given how hard it is to predict the future - there's always going to be failure. You just need enough companies to succeed, to make it worthwhile. Sometimes even the failures produce useful stuff, which can be bought cheap by someone else and make a contribution.

SpaceX is interesting, because they were viable if their innovation of re-usability hadn't come off. Now that it looks like it has (though obviously we'll need a few more years to demonstrate that), they're even further ahead.

Tesla is risker. It relies on improvements in battery tech, and I'm not sure if it can be viable without that. Other than as a niche sports car boutique I guess. But it's not like a 50-100% improvement in battery storage is totally unrealistic, we've been getting 5% extra capacity a year for quite a while now - and there's probably more research going on than ever.

Re: Will Tesla be independent for that long?

I don't think it's fair to call Musk a fruad. SpaceX should prove that. They've done some very hard engineering stuff - but also in a very practical way. In stages. They aimed for re-usable rockets, but planned to that it didn't matter if that tech could be made to work, they still had a viable business and workable tech. Maybe he's used PR and hype - but you can't argue with his results so far.

Similarly Tesla isn't all hype. It's got some happy customers, but it's not the real deal. But then he couldn'd do what he did with SpaceX here. Electric cars may never work.

At the moment they have a small niche, which other technologies may eclipse - and the potential to become much more than that. But I don't think it's clear to anyone what the long-term future of transport (or the energy sector in general) will be.

We currently have a working oil infrastructure. But it's expensive and risky, as it relies on the Middle East politics and causes climate change.

But we've got nothing to replace it. Battery tech isn't yet up to the job, but could become so "any day now". Or not. Even if it does, that's no panacea, as we'll then have to radically change our electricity infrastructure to be able to cope with the power needs of transport. Doable, but expensive and time consuming.

Maybe fuel cells are the solution? But creating a hydrogen economy to fuel them is even more expensive than upgrading the electricity sector.

Or we could end up with some other tech like flow-batteries or a cleaner hydrocarbon, perhaps in tandem with all cars becoming hybrids for maximum efficiency.

But even if Tesla fails, that doesn't make it fraud. If we can't get the battery tech to make it a success - that doesn't mean it wasn't an honest attempt.

Re: Will Tesla be independent for that long?

Tesla is considered to be "over-valued". In the sense that its market cap is way higher than you'd expect from its revenue. Which obviously makes sense if everyone expects the company to be making lots of money in the future.

However, that makes it much less of a tempting takeover target. Normally you're either trying to get a company cheap because the markets have totally under-valued it (say the Glazers buying Manchester United), or you're trying to buy one that's cheap because it's doing badly and you believe you can turn it around.

The other option, where price is less important, is when you're trying to build on synergies between your companies (so you can sack loads of staff), or just want to massively boost your market share. What car company can afford to absorb Tesla?

Well it's either that, or pay him a salary I guess.

Re: Any orbit should do

There is a pretty much set overall mass for your payload, given that your launch rocket has a payload limit.

Every extra kilo of fuel you carry is one less sensor package on your probe. Or less shielding / backup battery capacity / whatever.

If you want to decelerate the whole package to get into some sort of Martian orbit - then you've got to carry quite a few kilos of extra fuel. That means you do less science because either your probe doesn't last as long, or your probe has fewer instruments.

Worse, it costs even more fuel to get out of orbit - because you have to reduce your velocity quite a lot.

Basically it's a waste. And with our limited technology for getting out of the gravity well, we just can't afford waste in space missions. At the moment SpaceX charge $60m-odd to launch a rocket that's only burning about $300,000 worth of fuel. And that's because they're still pricing on throwing away the rest of the rocket.

Remember, it still costs $10k-$20k to get 1kg to low earth orbit - and in that total mass you still have to budget for all the lovely fuel to get you to Earth escape velocity, do a few course corrections and slow you down enough at Mars to make aerobraking workable in a very thin atmosphere.

On the other hand, the mass of a cubesat is very low compared to the whole payload. So even carrying the cubesat's entire mass again in extra fuel probably isn't an insurmountable cost - and whereas that fuel doesn't get you very far boosting the whole payload, it might take your cubesat quite a long way. And of course it's required (not a luxury) as you have to put your cubesat in orbit - putting your probe in orbit is an expensive luxury. Much cheaper to keep it in storage, in a nice clean-room on Earth, and send it after the dust has settled.

Fuel. Entering a stable orbit, and then having to brake from that to land is expensive in fuel. And fuel carried is precious mass that could be better used for more instruments.

Cubesats, being small and light, are much easier to move around.

Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

Bottom line though is that US justification of attacking Iraq (that US had proof hat Iraq had WMDs) was patently false.

No it wasn't. We knew that Iraq still had WMDs in 1998 when the weapons inspectors finally got kicked out. Or at least, "knew beyond reasonable doubt". Iraq were still obstructing the team's attempts to destroy what was known about (let alone if Saddam had more that had avoided detection so far), to the extent of throwing the inspectors out.

So it was perfectly reasonable to act on that knowledge.

As you say, Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone but its own population in 2003. But it still had a vast army, a nice oil industry and a whole bunch of people who knew how to make chemical weapons. Plus it had a reasonably advanced missile program, as they'd been modifying and upgrading their own SCUDS for years - though I don't know if they were up to actually building their own engines.

So it could have made itself a threat again reasonably quickly. As I recall sanctions were up for renewal at the UN in 2003 and were expected not to pass. Even the French were talking about opposing them - though I suspect they'd have let the Russians take the heat for actually vetoing. Not coincidentally Iraq owed France and Russia billions for all the military kit they'd sold them, and also needed lots of spares and replacements.

Remember that the RAF and US Airforce were regularly shot at by the Iraqis, patrolling the no-fly zones to stop Iraq attacking the Kurds and continuing with the genocide against the Marsh Arabs. It's not like this was a stable situation that the evil US and UK were stirring up.

Who was to know that Saddam wouldn't immediately arm-up again and invade Kuwait and Saudi? There was nothing to stop him at the Saudi border in 1990 - and he could have made retaking Kuwait a lot harder if he'd continued over that border and destroyed places like King Khaled Military City. The logistics of desert warfare are a complete bastard. Not to mention the Saudi and Kuwaiti oil wells. And those are a global strategic interest. It's why we went to war in 1991 after all.

Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

jmch,

The UN Security Council didn't authorise the attack in 2003. They only legitimised the occupation afterwards. The legal basis was I think taken from the 1990 authorisation of force, and the fact that Iraq hadn't complied with the 91 ceasefire disarmament agreements.

Which he hadn't. He still had SCUDs.

They were also unarguably in breach of the 91 agreements on chemical weapons as they threw the weapons inspectors out in about 1997. With only about 70-80% of the known stocks destroyed. The inspectors had been crawling over Iraq for so long, that they knew in a lot of cases what equipment and chemicals they'd ordered or made, and so had a pretty good idea how many weapons that led to. They'd not accounted for it all, QED.

I've not read a report that's managed to work out what went wrong, so I don't know exactly what happened. Did Saddam give it away, like he sent most of his air force to Iran to save it in 1990? Or bury it? Iraq's big, but people would know, and senior generals have since joined ISIS and probably have gone and dug it up, so that seems less likely. Or did he destroy it himself? If so why? Why not get the UN to do it, and get out from under sanctions?

As you say, you can't prove a negative, so once they were gone there was no way back. Saddam had pretended to give up the whole program about 5 times in the 90s, then the inspectors had found more than he'd admitted to - and the whole process of search, find, admit happened again.

Hans Blix admiited Iraq weren't cooperating with his inspectors in 2003 - but said he didn't think there were any weapons even though he couldn't know. His credibility was blown because it was him in charge of the IAEA in about 96 who was about to sign off that Iraq had no illicit nuclear program, when the CIA found it, and he subsequently had to demolish it.

Iraq also had the scientists and the knowledge to rebuild their chemical program as soon as sanctions were off.

So it was a mistake to justify the invasion on WMD, because even if Iraq had it, they didn't have the capability to use it effectively (as they'd had in 1990). But sanctions were collapsing, partly because of the collusion of France and Russia, so Iraq would not have stayed contained for much longer - and that was why they went for invasion, because the existing messy containment policy was about to fail.

I think Blair's need to get UN approval was the mistake. He should have let the US do it alone, or had the courage to sell the case for doing it on its merits, not try to sex it up. Iraq wasn't an immediate threat, but could quickly have become so with no sanctions and all its oil revenue.

Re: If your not on the list, you're not getting in

Red Bren,

I believe India never signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. So they were never bound not to develop nuclear weapons. It only applies to you if you sign it. Although as I understand it signatories aren't supposed to cooperate on civillian nuclear shinies with non-signees.

North Korea did sign the NNPT. And then developed nukes anyway. They also specifically agreed to halt their illegal development of nukes during the 90s famine, in exchange for aid. A deal they also broke. They haven't been invaded, and no evidence has been manufactured. They've tested nukes, so we know.

Pakistan and Israel also didn't sign up.

The point about signing a deal then breaking it is that your're automatically going to be less trusted. So the reason everyone joined sanctions on Iran is that they breached the treaty by secretly developing nukes - and then got caught. After years of sanctions, a deal has been agreed.

Iraq did have a nuclear program by the way. The UN demolished it in the mid 90s. I think the reason it was deemed legal to invade in 2003 was that they were still in breach of the ceasefire agreement from 1991 - which they'd never complied with despite ten years of inspections and sanctions.

Re: Stealth Landings?

x 7,

Stealth isn't all about being invisible so you can turn up and bomb their capital city out of a blue sky. It's about minimising your radar signature. How much stealth you apply to a platform depends on what role you want it to fulfill, how much money you want to spend, and how maneuverable you want it to be.

So if you're defending your carrier in air-to-air combat, and you can get a lock on the enemy fighters at 50 miles, and they can't lock you until you're at 40 miles - then you can have shot missiles at them and be running away before they can even get into range to return fire.

Stealth is about giving you an advantage. Not making you invisible.

Re: Stealth Landings?

You can't land on an aircraft carrier stealthily, because youu're next to a giant 60,000 tonne ship that is as unstrealthy as a large building.

As for the radar cross-section of the aircraft, I doubt it makes much difference. Although stealth depends on what angle the plane presents to the radar anyway.

Re: They hate the infantry

F18s need cats 'n' traps. The carriers weren't designed for that. A mistake I think.

However planes you use that way don't last as long as VSTOL. The airframes get knackered much earlier. So you may get cheaper ones, but have to buy them twice.

I don't agree with the MOD's decisions. But they aren't actually stupid. Thought has gone into them.

and there are some city pairs where a 1000-seater would be just the thing

I know this is true, but aren't quite a few of these short haul routes? Is the A380 up to that many duty cycles - or would they have to produce a special toughened version like Boeing did with the 747? If so, how much does that cost?

Or has design now changed, so that long haul planes can do the same number of cycles as short haul? I wouldn't expect so, because if you've got stronger materials you can make the long haul version lighter, and so more fuel efficient. Which is going to be more important to most of your users.

Re: Microwaved

My steamer just lives on the hob permanently. It's got a big stainless steel saucepan underneath it, which is the perfect size for mash. And two steamer things that sit on top which can be set aside when I use it for that. But normally I can steam veg in it at the same time. Makes life much easier when you're doing a roast to have just one hob doing say cauliflower, french beans and peas. Admittedly if you're cooking for more than 6 people, it's not really big enough.

Oh, and sprouts are yummy. And make great bubble and squeak too. Steaming does mean you can't salt them, but that's healthier and also what the gravy is for.

wolfetone,

Is that Varoufakis' book? Might be an interesting read, but isn't he talking about the Euro and the EU - and the problems with them? Rather than Bitcoin. And I don't see how Bitcoin is the dollar even makes sense.

Also, there's an IT angle. Varoufakis used to be chief economist for Valve.

Duncan Large,

The Blockchain doesn't prove that you owned the coins. It proves that you had access to the wallet for however brief a period. As various Bitcoin related scams have shown.

I admit it gives more security on the transaction. But it still won't save you from mis-typing the amount you're paying. Bank errors do happen, but not all that often, and I don't buy blockchain stopping that. Or saving you from fraud. Yes it does require a trusted middle-man (such as the current payment processors in the banking system) - but it also requires a lot more security savvy and embuggerance for the users - so the risk you save by using blockchain over third party banks, you lose in having to secure your wallet / wallets.

I just don't see crypto-currency solving any current problems other than, "how do I transfer money untaxed and hidden from the police".

I agree that blockchain may well turn out useful for the Land Registry. Or software licences.

A use the Bank of England are looking at I think is loan collaterol. Say a bank wants to borrow £1m from the BofE or another bank on the inter-bank loan market - they currently would pledge another asset as collaterol against the loan (this would be a government or corporate bond or other security). This is what's always happened. They've looked at a system to run this. Then both banks (and regulators) would be able to know how much uncommitted capital the banks have at any one time.

Re: "Like I say, there’s no user guide to tell you what all the icons means."

Mr Dabbs,

Proof yet again that there's no point going to a vendor's site and trying to find what you need, and bloody well know is there.

Search on Google, and they'll find it for you much quicker. Something everyone's long said for finding stuff in Microsoft's knowledge base when Windows is playing up. I wonder if Bing is as good at that as Google nowadays?

Last time I had a 'droid (HTC Wildfire) there was no manual at all. Google had left the Android manual to the OEMs, so it came with a basic paper booklet and there wasn't a manual for Android 2.2 anywhere. I was able to find developer documentation, so I had the info for the APIs - just not how to set up email accounts.